Chapter 15

There are as many personalities as there are human beings.

Self-proclaimed “ordinary people” prattle on about common sense, shared understanding, and normality, but actual values vary wildly from person to person. Sometimes you find people whose thought processes are completely detached from those around them—and sometimes, those people turn out to be sages or geniuses.

In that sense, one could argue that the Royal Foreign Hazardous Species Countermeasures Knights is packed with geniuses… or so the rookie knight Calme thought.

“Now then, everyone? Please be EX-TREMELY careful with the aftercare of this poison dumpling strategy!”

In the Knight Order’s meeting room, the scholar Nonoka—who defty navigated the room in her platform-upper shoes—pinned reference materials to the blackboard. Beside her stood Knight Bevion, attending to her like a butler. Every member here was eccentric, but he was likely the strangest man among the rookie generation.

“Bevion-kun, the materials for number three and four!”

“Right here!!”

“Bevion-kun, grab the magnets!”

“Right here!!”

‘He’s completely transformed into an assistant…’

Bevion was a wild-looking young man with a deep tan. He wasn’t particularly bright or skilled with a blade, but he was deeply compassionate and easily moved to emotion. In short, he was a bit gullible and unreliable, but a very good person.

“If things get tough or you’re being bullied, come talk to me!” …He used to be that kind of guy, though…

“Bevion-kun! …You did great♪”

“Hah! I am unworthy of such bliss!! With those words alone, I can fight for another hundred years!!”

The young man responded to Nonoka’s head pat with a look of pure, heartwarming happiness. He looked like he was about to burst into a nosebleed if she kept stroking his head.

To be honest… and sorry to say this, but it was cringeworthy.

Supposedly, for a certain reason, he had become incapable of loving anyone except small girls. And Nonoka was “legal lolita” and “right in his strike zone”… or so he said.

As someone who had never been in love with a woman, Calme found the sensation difficult to grasp, but it felt like Bevion’s feelings strayed beyond the biological instinct of finding children adorable. Otherwise, he wouldn’t neglect his duties as a knight to follow Nonoka so faithfully.

…Though Nonoka herself treated him like a convenient errand boy.

Poor Bevion. Her “type” came with the strict requirement of being a man skilled at hunting Orcs. And there was already one powerhouse who met those criteria and had even gone on a date with her… but that was another story.

“Ehem… First, regarding these anti-monster poison dumplings. As explained before, these dumplings cause sudden poisoning symptoms and lead to organ failure once the toxins accumulated in the body exceed a certain level.”

“Looking at it again, it really is ruthless… The reason we didn’t use a fast-acting lethal poison was to destroy the Orc colony from its core, right?”

“But if that’s the case, is there really anything to worry about…? We were told that absorbing a small amount wouldn’t harm one’s health, and we’ve already collected the Orc corpses filled with the poison. Even when we scouted the cave, the Orcs inside had long since lost their leadership, so hunting them down wasn’t an issue. Isn’t it ‘mission accomplished’?”

“There IS a problem! It’s not that simple!!”

The onlookers felt a sense of calm as Nonoka puffed out her cheeks in anger, yet they remained silent. She was childish and cute, but she was also one of the most knowledgeable “brains” in this Knight Order.

Once she confirmed the room had settled down, Nonoka placed her hands on her hips and tapped the pinned materials with her pointer like a schoolteacher.

“I tried my very, very best to keep the toxicity low to be as natural as possible, but poison is still poison! In fact, low-toxicity substances can be more troublesome later on!”

“And why is that?”

“Suppose we left the poison dumplings we placed in the mountains just as they are! Eventually, the dumplings would mix into the soil, and plants would absorb those nutrients—along with the poison!”

“No way, will the grass wither?! Or will it turn into poisonous plants?!”

“They won’t wither, and they won’t change. At that stage, they’re just normal plants that have absorbed a tiny bit of toxin. However, the herbivores that eat those toxin-filled plants—”

On the pinned materials, illustrations showed poison particles from the grass entering an animal, with a larger amount of toxins gathering in its stomach. It seemed to mean that the amount of poison increased by exactly how much they regularly ate.

“—In this way, the amount of poison stored within the animal’s body becomes even more concentrated.”

“Wouldn’t it just leave the body naturally with their waste?”

Another member voiced a doubt, but Nonoka shook her head.

“This poison is the type that accumulates in the internal organs and is hard to expel. If it were a poison that left through waste, the effects would show before it could accumulate, and conversely, if it showed no effect and didn’t accumulate, the whole thing would be pointless. The ‘time-delayed annihilation strategy’ wouldn’t work.”

“True. It was specifically because it worked on a delay that we could get the Orcs to eat the dumplings without them becoming suspicious.”

Vice Commander Rony, who had been briefed on the strategy beforehand, nodded repeatedly. He likely already knew what she was about to say. He had a slender build and a somewhat unreliable face, but at times like this, he was strangely reassuring.

“Now, here’s a question for Calme-kun!!”

“Hyawah?! M-m-m-me?!”

He instinctively recoiled as her rounded index finger was suddenly pointed straight at him. Since he was naturally the shy and timid type, he tended to overreact even if it was just Nonoka. Exposed to the lukewarm gazes of those around him, he cleared his throat and managed to regain his composure.

“Wh-what is it…?”

“If a larger carnivore were to eat that herbivore… what would happen to the poison?”

“E-Er… th-the herbivores’ poison transfers to the carnivores?”

“And if they eat two or three of them?”

“They’d accumulate two or three helpings of poison… Ah, could they suffer poisoning symptoms!?”

“Yup, as expected of Calme-kun! Your intuition is as sharp as I hoped!!”

“P-Please stop startling me; it’s bad for my heart…”

Nonoka gave a firm thumbs-up and a wink, but Calme’s mosquito-sized heart was thumping wildly from that one moment. He secretly wished she would be as gentle as Varna.

“Hic… as usual, Calme, you’re useless without Varna around, aren’t ya? That kind of dependency isn’t great—not even for Varna♪”

“I’ll consider that once your dependency on alcohol is cured, Senior Rock. You know what they say about the pot calling the kettle black, right?”

“…Aren’t you being a bit harsh toward me lately?”

Calme ended up snapping back at him without thinking. To be honest, Rock smelled like booze, caused trouble for Varna and Calme idn’t like him very much. Seriously, he wondered why the Senior hung around with such a drunkard so often. He should just cut him down.

However, that exchange caused the meeting to stall… and as expected, Nonoka clapped her hands together.

“Uuu, someone is interrupting Nonoka while she’s explaining… peek.”

“Hah! Lady Nonoka is saddened…!! Knight Rock!! You dog, stop throwing unnecessary teases at Knight Calme!!”

“Huh?! Isn’t the standard here to punish both sides?! And I’m way more senior than you, yet you call me ‘you dog’?! Isn’t the wind blowing seriously hard against me today?!”

Digression aside.

“——And so, the poison gathers in the stronger creatures in order until they die. This phenomenon is called biomagnification.”

“Hmm… say, Nonoka-san. Does that also happen to… humans?”

“Of course it does. Besides, it’s scary to think about the poison seeping in and mixing with the groundwater. Caves are often connected to underground water sources, after all. If Orc waste flows underground from there, the poison might show up in well water. That’s why we have to think long and hard about the type and amount of poison we use… I never want to do it again.”

“I see… In short, this strategy carries too high a risk of destroying the environment where local residents live, so frequent use is strictly forbidden.”

Nonoka nodded deeply at Vice Commander Rony’s summary. Perhaps because she was a naturalist, she felt a resistance to introducing artificial chemicals into nature. Nonoka really was kind. Her title as one of the Three Great Mother Goddesses of this Order wasn’t just for show.

Furthermore, backup fire came from another Mother Goddess.

“I won’t be helping to make those poison dumplings ever again.”

“C-Chef Tamae-san…”

“Cooking isn’t a tool for killing. I have no intention of letting my cooking squad be taught how to poison anyone else. Besides, making those dumplings wasn’t free. Because of them, the filler ingredients and meat we were supposed to have in reserve are completely gone.”

“For now, we’re making do with things like the venison jerky from the last expedition!”

Susie, the vice-chef of the cooking squad standing next to Tamae, exposed their dire financial situation with a bright smile. It seemed that meeting the conditions for a dumpling an Orc would actually want to eat consumed a fair amount of labor and resources; the Order’s food situation had apparently become quite destitute behind the scenes.

“Furthermore, there’s one more concern…”

“Wait, there’s more!?”

“Yes, there is… the possibility of ‘Poison-Resistant Orcs’ appearing.”

According to Nonoka’s lecture on the mechanism of “Poison-Resistant Orc” emergence—which even an idiot could understand—if survivors of a poisoned Orc colony crossbred with females from another pack, there was a chance that Orcs with a tolerance for the poison would gradually increase.

Of course, the probability of a stray Orc being accepted into another colony and climbing to a high rank in the hierarchy wasn’t high. However, Orcs were known to rarely produce hybrids with other humanoid species in very specific cases, so we couldn’t let our guard down. In short, to be safe, they had to hunt down every single stray Orc in these mountains.

“…I understand the situation. Therefore, the policy moving forward will be to not use this strategy unless it is an absolute emergency. It sounds unpleasant to say, but as a superior, I cannot seal it away completely. High risk or not, I don’t want any of our people dying.”

“Isn’t that fine? Basically, as long as we don’t fall into a situation where we have to use the same strategy again, there’s no problem, right?”

“Oh, it seems even the lowly commoner Knight Rock, who drowns himself in booze every day, occasionally utters a sentence with a shred of intelligence.”

“Oh, you were here, Chronicler Yagara!”

“I’ve been here the whole time, you drunkard!!”

“That reminds me, how about a drink tonight? I’ll treat you to my secret stash.”

“Secret… stash… a drink… ugh, my head…!”

“Well, leaving the beard aside, isn’t what Senior Rock said reasonable?”

“Yeah. Ultimately, it comes down to our skill, effort, and strategy!”

Ignoring Chronicler Yagara, who for some reason was clutching his head with a look of agony, the members of the Order raised their fists one after another to make their vow.

Gallant, hardy, and always moving forward with a positive attitude. If one strategy failed, they moved to the next, adapting flexibly to the situation and environment. Not bound by stiff knightly discipline, they continued to fight Orcs solely for the practical benefit of the people. That was them—the Royal Foreign Hazardous Species Countermeasures Knights.

“We’ll exterminate the Orcs more safely, at a lower cost, and in a more eco-friendly way!!”

“”“Yeah!! On our pride and our name!!”““

Everyone threw their arms up together. Nonoka and Tamae looked happy at that vow. And so, a new course of action was added to the Order’s repertoire.

The only thing was, a small part of Calme felt lonely.

“It’s a bit of a shame Senior and the others couldn’t take the vow with us…”

“Don’t worry, Calme! I’ll send a message about today via familiar! Then we can all take the vow together again!”

“Eh, really?! That sounds… ni…”

Calme turned around at that voice, only to be met by the gaze of a large owl staring at his face from ultra-close range on the arm of his fellow rookie, Knight Caliban.

“…Wah-hyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah?! B-b-b-b-bird!! The bird is too close!!”

“Man… you really are a coward without Varna around. Screaming like a girl.”

『I WASN’T EVEN DOING ANYTHING… THAT HURTS MY FEELINGS…』

“Because!! Because if the Senior were here, he’d always protect meeeeeee!!”

“Are you a princess or something?!”

Calme wanted to deny Caliban’s retort, but considering how unmanly he was being, the fact that he couldn’t deny it was painful.

Knight Calme—a half-baked knight who couldn’t feel secure unless protected by Varna. Even he had his great points… but the fact that he couldn’t display them unless Varna was nearby was the one flaw in his character.